The
college entrance scandal that broke this week is symptomatic of everything that
is wrong in America today: greed. (Well, plus racism, xenophobia, religious
intolerance, guns and ignorance.)

The
golden rule in America, corrupted since President Reagan told us greed is good,
circa 1980, is, “He who has the gold makes the rules,” and over time, those
with the gold have used it to purchase a Congress that creates laws that give
them more and more of it at the expense of everyone else. The result is that
inequality has reached the point that we are now in another Gilded Age.

And
yet, though the ultra-rich have written a blank check for themselves, they
still want to steal from us. (Think Dick Cheney and Halliburton during the Iraq
War.) And though those caught up in the college entrance scandal have myriad
legal ways to help their children get into a good school, they still broke the
law to get even more advantage.

Perhaps
we should have a smidgen of sympathy for one of Lori Loughlin’s daughters who
is caught up in this scandal. Based on a social media posting by her, she is a vacuous,
incurious, spoiled airhead who would have trouble getting into any school
without spectacular help. And do you think for a moment that George W. Bush or
Donald Trump would have gotten into their prestigious schools without help
(read daddy’s money)?

Another
example of the corrosive influence of money in our system is the light sentence
Paul Manafort received in his first criminal trial from a judge obviously
conditioned to genuflect to wealth and influence.

So,
it turns out that our best and brightest are merely our most corrupt and venal.
But deep down, we already knew that. It’s been apparent for a while.
fffffffffff

That is the question
Democrats are debating presently. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is correct:
impeachment is, at the least, premature.

That being the case, I
was stunned when The Atlantic, a generally sober magazine and one of my
favorites, published a major article by Yoni Appelbaum in its March issue
advocating impeachment now, which was as flawed with specious arguments and as
misguided as anything I have ever read in the magazine. Very disappointing.

Basically, Appelbaum’s
argument is that we should begin the impeachment process now because Trump is already
impeachable based on what we already know, and that even if it is not
successful, it will gum up the political works, and impede Trump’s political
agenda.

First, impeachment is
far too serious an issue to play fast and loose with. That is simply
irresponsible governance. And, our legislature is already dysfunctional enough.
We need to get serious about restoring it, not making it worse.

Second, it is obvious
that Trump’s base, and therefore Republican legislators, don’t care what Trump
has done so far. They have sold their souls to him, so impeachment on the basis
of what we know now is bound to fail, waste everyone’s time, and diminish the
gravity of the process.

Impeachment, if it ever
occurs, will have to await the findings of Robert Mueller’s investigation,
which may or may not produce evidence sufficient to warrant it, or the product
of investigations now beginning in the House. My own expectation is that Trump
will survive the Mueller investigation, unless it produces some really
egregious crime, and maybe even then.

I expect, however, that
the investigations by House committees will be so aggressive that they will
drive Trump from office ultimately. They, and the weight of the Mueller
investigation, will cause Trump to quit, or lose re-election.

So, I don’t expect Trump
to be impeached. I expect he will likely go to jail after he leaves office,
based on his various financial crimes, rather than anything political. Trump
brought this on himself by shining bright light on his personal life by running
for president. It couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.
r

There has been a lot of
important news recently, including just this last week – too much to cover in
one post, so I will address various items individually in subsequent ones.

But the most important
recent news, in my view, occurred in mid-February, when a Delta Airlines flight
from Orange County airport in Southern California to Seattle experienced severe
turbulence so violent that it forced an emergency landing in Reno, NV, and sent
three passengers to the hospital.

I say again that we will
start paying attention to climate change when it becomes too dangerous to fly,
which may be sooner than we think. I wouldn’t be surprised to see more of these
incidents in the spring, a traditionally turbulent weather period.

Coincidentally, the
latest Democrat to announce he is running for president is Washington State
governor Jay Inslee, whose campaign focus will be exclusively on fighting
climate change. He is well spoken and may prove to be a compelling candidate.

Sudden Thought: The fastest and easiest way to get Jared Kushner’s top secret
security clearance revoked, which he should never have gotten in the first
place, and wouldn’t have were he not Trump’s son-in-law, is to indict him for
and convict him of a crime. He is surely guilty of some. Should be easy peasy.

Status of the States: The worst state cup goes to Arizona, my own personal state,
courtesy of Congressperson Paul Gosar, my own personal Congressperson, for his
antics during the Michael Cohen hearing. He embarrassed himself, but also the
state. Gosar should learn first to pronounce words correctly, and then not to
use them.

A
decision point is at hand: to blog or not to blog. The annual fee to retain my
domain is coming due or I will lose it. Frankly, I’m ambivalent. I haven’t been
blogging much since Cynthia died, and blogging, nor much of anything else,
hasn’t seemed as important to me since she passed away. On the other hand, there’s
a lot of disgusting stuff going on about which to bitch and moan.

I’ve
decided to continue the blog until the next presidential election in 2020, and
retire the domain thereafter, whatever the election’s result. During this time,
I intend to write about threatened rights, such as freedom of speech and
privacy, beginning below.

My
position as an absolutist regarding freedom of speech is being challenged
currently. There’s some particularly disgusting speech being thrown around
today. Hate speech, politically motivated lies to frighten or motivate voters
generated by bots, out and out lies about just about everything from President Trump and resurrected,
unfortunate comments about race and gender by public figures made years ago, to
name just a few.

Which
brings me to Virginia Governor Ralph Northam, who posted a picture of himself
in blackface on his medical school yearbook page. Many have called for him to
resign over it. I support Governor Northam’s refusal to do so for three reasons
relating largely to freedom of speech issues.

First,
there is nothing illegal about wearing blackface. It’s offensive, it’s stupid
and it’s antiquated, but it does not rise to a high crime, nor even a misdemeanor.
For that matter, it’s not a crime to be a bigot, even if Northam were one,
which I doubt, because…

Two,
in public office, Northam’s actual deeds have been liberal and in my view enlightened on social issues. He has
evinced little if any bigotry or xenophobia. In fact, just the opposite. He has,
for example, supported moving Confederate statues and monuments from the public
square to a museum, which is where they belong.

Finally, popular opinion has changed
dramatically, and for the better, since Northam was in medical school. In this new
environment, the 80s seem a long time ago, in absolute years (30), and
certainly in the light years speed of social change. I’m not comfortable
judging peoples’ past remarks and behavior by present standards, particularly
when current behavior is so much more enlightened. We grow.

Accusations regarding Lt.
Governor Justin Fairfax are a different story. He’s accused of sexual assault,
an actual crime. I’m still uncomfortable about judging people’s past deeds in a
period when attitudes are changing rapidly, but a crime is a crime, and just
because it may have been ignored or tolerated in the past doesn’t mean it
shouldn’t be enforced now. If charges against Fairfax are proven, I think he
should go.

I don’t know enough about Virginia’s Attorney General, who is also being looked at askance due to earlier behavior, to comment on his situation, but it sniffs of overwrought political correctness from this distance.

The Dallas Cowboys lost
their playoff game to the Los Angeles Rams ignominiously. They were beaten
badly by a better team, and certainly by a much better coach. The Rams covered
the spread by only one point, but anyone who saw this game knows that the
Cowboys were never going to win it, which was apparent from the first snap.

The Cowboys were a fraud
all season. Jerry Jones stood pat in the off-season, and when the same old team
took the field, their record for the first half of the season was a dismal 3-5.
Their vaunted offensive line suffered serious injury and illness damage, which
didn’t help.

Then, the Cowboys fell
into two pieces of good luck, which obscured their true level of capability.
First, Jones, after having done nothing to improve the team in the offseason,
was shamed into trading for receiver Amari Cooper. There was some risk in this
trade, but the Cowboys hit a jackpot with Cooper; he turned out to be well
worth the trade.

Next, the Cowboys played
a string of teams who were having a very down year, and/or were devastated by
injuries, which goosed their record. (The win over the Seahawks in the first
playoff game, like the inexplicable win over New Orleans in the regular season,
remain outlier mysteries.) So, the Cowboy’s season is over in its typical
failing fashion.

Of course, my season
ended in disappointment when the Cowboys won its two games previous to being
stomped by the Rams, because it meant that Jerry Jones would not have to fire
his mediocre coaching staff. So, he kept the head coach, fired one guy and
elevated a current staff member to offensive coordinator, perpetuating mediocrity
via incest.

The Cowboys have no hope
of rising above mediocrity until they get a new head coach, if they can find
one willing to work for Jerry. Jones seems content with all this, so everybody
wins, except the fans.

The Kansas City Chiefs
wiped up the floor with the Indianapolis Colts, and looked good on both sides
of the ball doing it. The game was a rout. I have rarely seen a team as
unprepared for a playoff game as were the Colts for theirs.

New England can be beaten
and will be beaten someday. But until that happens, I will always favor them in
any game. The Patriots dispatched the San Diego Chargers with ease. There is
something about the Chargers that is just off somehow. They have good players
and show flashes, but just don’t seem to be able to win when it counts.

The most competitive playoff
game, between Philadelphia and New Orleans, saw the Saints rise to the occasion
and justify their first seed status after a couple of lackluster games late in
the season.

Early in the season, I
picked the Rams and Chiefs to meet in the Super Bowl. (Making a pick before the
season even starts is fruitless. You have to see the teams play a game or two
before you can get a sense of their potential.) So, by the division championship
games, both my picks were still in the hunt.

Given the match-ups, I
had picked the Chiefs, but I expected the Patriots to win, and they did.
Likewise, I had picked the Rams, but I expected New Orleans to win, and they
would have if not for the most egregious screw-up in NFL playoff history. It
seems the NFL couldn’t imagine such an egregious screw-up, so they had made no
provision for it. The result of the theft of the game from New Orleans tainted
the championships and therefore the Super Bowl.
I’ll be watching the commercials, but the game has no legitimacy to me.

I agree with
Commissioner Goodell that he can’t stop the presses now and schedule a make-up
game. But what he should have done, and could have done, is get on the phone,
stopped the game immediately after the screw-up and overturn the terrible, game
changing, true winner ruining non-call.

I’ve watched a lot of football
recently, but I was most interested in the two semi-final games of the BCS
Championship, of course. Both went about as Vegas predicted. Clemson wiped up
the floor with Notre Dame and Alabama beat Oklahoma, though the Tide couldn’t cover
the spread against OU.

It was only a matter of
time, having the worst defense in football, that it would cost us a game. Until
Alabama, we had been able to outscore other teams however many points they
managed to run up on our wretched defense. OU had scored 28 or more points in
every game this season, and they scored 34 against Alabama, but that wasn’t
enough to beat the Tide. They were too good.

In my view, OU
squandered two likely national championships, given its amazing offenses, due
to its inconceivably bad defenses. My
fear now is that bad defenses will plague us for a while longer, even when we
get a new, better defensive coordinator, because it takes years to overcome a
reputation for terrible defense like we’ve created, for what good defensive
player recruit will want to come to a school where they may worry they won’t be
developed? A pox on OU for not firing Mike Stoops three years ago. I know why
we didn’t, but still.

The Cowboys won a
meaningless game against the woeful New York Giants with a last minute,
improbable touchdown. Dallas sat Zeke Elliott and rested two banged up starting
linemen. (Dak Prescott played the entire game, however, as did Eli Manning for
the Giants.) So, on the surface it was a credible win for the Cowboys in those
circumstances…except that: 1) the Giants are a terrible team this year, and 2) also
sitting out for New York was Odell Beckham. If he had played, the Giants likely
would have won the game.

That’s the thing with
Dallas. The NFC East is way down this year, so Dallas won a lot of games
against woeful teams, and/or teams that suffered season devastating injuries
(the Washington Redskins lost their starting quarterback, perhaps forever, with
a badly broken leg), and just barely managed to win them. (The one notable, and
to me still inexplicable, exception is Dallas’ win over the New Orleans Saints
and Drew Brees. Can’t deny that one.)

The Cowboys next game
will be against a better team – the Seattle Seahawks (Seattle beat the Chiefs,
for crying out loud, and already beat the Cowboys in the regular season).
Dallas has enough good players now, especially if their banged up offensive
linemen are healthier from rest, to compete with Seattle, but I have no
confidence they have the coaching staff to do it.

I expect Dallas to have
another one and done playoffs, and I hope I’m right, because if I am wrong,
Jerry Jones might keep Jason Garrett as head coach. But if Jerry keeps
interfering with his coaches, even changing coaches won’t help, because, like
President Trump, Jones will have difficulty finding a good coach willing to
work for him.

I thought the best bowl
game was between Washington State and Iowa State, a Big XII team, which Wazzu
won 28-26. The Cyclones gave a good accounting of themselves, and I expect them
to continue improving.

I was glad to see Texas
beat Georgia. Texas played well, though it was obvious that Georgia, expecting
to be in the playoffs, didn’t really want to be there and were lackluster. The
game reminded me of the one OU won against Alabama, when Alabama, for the same
reason, clearly didn’t have its head in the game. But a win is a win, and Texas
is coming back.

Florida pounded Michigan
in the Rose Bowl, showing how weak is the Big Ten these days, and how overrated
the Wolverines turned out to be.

Oklahoma State beat
Missouri, and a good Kentucky team, coached by Mark Stoops, the youngest of the
Stoops brothers, I think, beat Penn State, a chronically overrated Big Ten
school.

LSU beat UCF in a pretty
good game 40-32. I was cheering for UCF, coached by former OU quarterback Josh
Heupel, who won our last National Championship in 2000. Like his mentor Mike
Leach, now head coach at Washington State, for Heupel, it’s all about offense.
They, like Oklahoma, both need to find a better defensive coach somewhere.
(Note: Heupel’s predecessor, Scott Frost, left UCF to be head coach at his alma
mater, Nebraska. He must be an idiot.

In the Redbox (sounds
like a venereal disease doesn’t it?) Bowl, Oregon beat Michigan State (another
Big Ten loser) 7-6, the lowest bowl game score since near the beginning of the
last century. They should call it the Impotence Bowl instead and be done with
it.

So far, there are
already eight coaching vacancies in the NFL (a euphemism for firings), not
counting Jason Garrett, for whom I have high hopes of being fired. The toughest
of these vacancies to fill, and the worst team to inherit, is the Arizona
Cardinals. Not only do they have a chronically incompetent organization, but
said organization fired a competent coach after one year without giving him a
chance. Who would want to coach there?

The most desirable
vacancy is the Cleveland Browns. They have an improving organization, an
improving team and good young quarterback in Baker Mayfield. How much is
Cleveland going to be willing to offer Lincoln Riley? It may turn out to be an
offer Riley can’t refuse, but he would be crazy to take it.

Let’s start with the pro
games for a change, since Dallas played Thursday night. I was as wrong as can
be about the Dallas v. New Orleans game. I never dreamed the Cowboys would beat
the Saints.

Dallas’ defense played
really well. The offense played really ordinary. The Saints played really
awful. But, hey, the Cowboys won. Does this mean they will be 9-7…or better?
We’ll see.

But I was right about my beloved Sooners. They beat Texas in the Big XII Championship game, as I expected. The defense played a little better than previously, with an interception and a safety. I particularly enjoyed the safety. But OU was always going to score if and when they needed to. Texas can enjoy the Sugar Bowl or someplace, and I hope they win.

I
was also right that if OU won and the other favorites did also, that OU would
make the playoffs. I heard a bunch of silly talk last night after all the games
were completed about Georgia or Ohio State getting in instead of OU, but I knew
that was nonsense. There was no way OSU was going to leap over OU, and the
Georgia scenario was ludicrous on its face. I’ll tell you why.

Georgia
played probably the best they have played all year against Alabama, and scored
28 points to Alabama’s 35. If those two teams were to play again, do you think
Georgia would score more than 28 points? No way in hell. But do you think OU
could score more than 35 points against Alabama? Possibly. I think the
committee wanted to see if OU could succeed where others have not. We shall
see.

I
wrote a terrific recap of relevant football thoughts about last weekend’s games,
but my computer lost it and I was too lazy to reproduce it, so I published
nothing.

But
one of the points I would have made had I been able to publish is that I
thought the needle pointed to an 8-8 season for the Dallas Cowboys, up from
7-9, since Washington had lost its quarterback for the season, just before the
Redskins play Dallas on Thanksgiving Day.

Any
team who plays Dallas on Thanksgiving is already at a disadvantage, thanks to
Tex Schramm’s genius. The opponent has a short week before having to travel to
Dallas, leaving less time to prepare and practice for the game. Add in having
to bring a back-up quarterback to starting status, and the cards were stacked
badly against Washington in Dallas, a game I think Washington otherwise would
have won.

So,
the Cowboys won the game, though no one who saw it can rationally doubt that
the Redskins would have won if Alex Smith had been able to start at quarterback.

So,
I now see the Cowboys posting another mediocre 8-8 season and missing the
playoffs, again. I can see them beating Tampa Bay and New York Giants, but
that’s it for this season.

My
beloved Oklahoma Sooners beat West Virginia on the road rather more handily in
my view than the score suggested. This sets up a rematch with Texas in the Big
XII Championship game. If OU wins that one, far from a foregone conclusion, since
Texas has gotten better and our defense has gotten worse, we may or may not get
into the playoffs.

The
West Virginia game proved two things: OU’s defense is a flailing, failing
disaster. I have never seen a worse one on a Sooner team, and they seem to be
regressing each week. However, it must be said that, to their credit, they
actually scored two defensive touchdowns off West Virginia fumbles, and made an
important interception near the end of the game. But, they still stink on ice.

The
second thing proven is that it doesn’t matter how bad the defense is; OU can
outscore anybody. I hope the selection committee can figure that out.

I
watched the Michigan at Ohio State game. I figured it was the only game where
we were likely to get some help getting into the playoffs. I expected OSU to beat
Michigan, again, and they did, taking #4 Michigan out of the picture.

I
never expected USC to beat Notre Dame, and of course they didn’t. They gave ND
a strong tussle for a while, but lost the game due to their almost unimaginable
ineptitude, which has been on display all season. But at least USC, by giving
Notre Dame a close game, pointed out how overrated Notre Dame is, since USC is
truly terrible this year. Still, Notre Dame will get into the playoffs. They’re
always overrated and it doesn’t seem to matter to anybody.

So, this leaves only one team standing between OU and the playoffs, other than the aforementioned Texas Longhorns, and that’s Georgia. If OU wins out and Alabama beats Georgia, we should be in. Interestingly, however, if Georgia upsets Alabama, the top four teams might remain the same, with Alabama dropping only to #4, with the result the four current playoff teams will remain unchanged. We shall have to wait and see.

Christopher de Bellaigue, author of TheIslamic Enlightenment, begins his book by proclaiming it has a startling and controversial thesis, namely that all through Islamic history there were reformers trying to bring the religion and the territory, for they are one and the same, into modernity.

To this startling and
controversial thesis, I say Duh. It’s
not the least startling. I am perfectly willing to accept it. There are always
some people, however small a minority, who are trying to move forward from
ignorance toward the light. There’s nothing controversial about that idea at
all.

It doesn’t help de Bellaigue’s
thesis that at the end of the book, he is compelled to admit that all the
reformers failed. In fact, it begs the question why “enlightenment” is even in
the title.

This does not mean, however,
the book is not worth reading. There is a great deal of interesting and well
written history of the Middle East in it. I read it for that reason, gained
more knowledge and insight about the subject, and found it well worth the
effort.

My beloved Oklahoma Sooners won a shootout – 48 to
47 – against a mediocre Oklahoma Aggies team that ranks eighth out of the 10
teams in the Big XII. Don’t ask.

We were damned lucky to win that game. The
Aggies cut through our defense like a hot knife through butter. The game ended
with the Aggies going for a two-point conversion that would have won the game
for them. It took a good defensive stop, but also a poor offensive pass or the
play might have succeeded.

That said, we almost always we always do find a
way to beat the Oklahoma Aggies, even when they have had much, much better
teams than this one. The Aggies used to win one about once a generation. They’ve
improved. Now it’s about once in a little more than a decade. It must drive
them crazy.

Oklahoma’s defense is absolutely terrible,
statistically one of the very worst in the NCAA. I have never seen such a disparity
between the excellence of an offense and the impotence of a defense on the same
team.

Our defense is so bad that it is impossible to
see how OU can move up in the rankings, let alone reach the playoff bracket,
even if we win out, which is no foregone conclusion, as we still have to play
West Virginia, a very good team, perhaps twice.

By not firing Stoops and upgrading our defensive
staff years ago, as was obviously needed, we are squandering a truly excellent
offensive year. (Come back, Brent Venables. All is forgiven.)

Well, son of a bitch. How ‘bout them Cowboys!
They beat the Philadelphia Iggles on the road Sunday night. They played with
spirit. It must have dawned on the coaches and players that everyone was
playing for their job that night. Jerry Jones is obviously feeling the sting of
his competence being criticized universally.

That said, this still looks like a 7 and 9 team
to me. I can see them winning over the Buccaneers and the Falcons, the teams at
the bottom of the NFC North. Anything more than that would be gravy. And if
they do eek out another game somewhere, the Cowboys will only be adding another
link to their chain of mediocre 8-8 seasons, which I don’t think Dallas’ management
can stand any more.

Please note that Cleveland quarterback Baker
Mayfield threw three touchdowns and won a third game for Cleveland. Mayfield,
as every OU fan knows well, is the goods. He will win games for Cleveland on
his own, and inspire his mediocre team to play better. Now all Cleveland has to
do is get some decent players around him, which is not the case at present, to
say the least.

I will be watching with interest when undefeated University of Central Florida (UCF) plays Cincinnati (9-1) this weekend. The game will be easy to find. It will be featured on College Game Day and televised nationally. UCF coach Josh Heupel is already being interviewed on national sports shows.